


Shrapnel

by awkwardeye



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: AU, Drabble, F/M, Not really graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 06:18:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardeye/pseuds/awkwardeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The moment following an attack</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shrapnel

Jackie Kennedy held a piece of her dead husband’s skull in her hand. She sat with his blood on her face, with his gaping head in her lap, and she didn’t comprehend a thing, didn’t store in her memory so much as an action or breath drawn in those dismal moments filled with the white noise of chaos. There are recordings of her leaping out of the car, onto the trunk, and snatching that piece of her darling John, and she can’t recall it any more than she can recall the moment she entered this world or the moment she left it. But those moments are solid, immortalized in history more so than her husband’s blood on her skin or his skull in her palm.

Mikasa isn’t Jackie Kennedy, though. But she’s beside Levi when it happens and sees it happen so slowly she feels that time has halted. Her head spins, uncomprehending of the slackening of his jaw and the way how he falls – crawls – forward so very slowly, and is filled with static, emptiness. Reality hits and it misses her in one moment. Icy, burning, she’s struck, shielded. Blood pumping in her ears, rushing through her body so quickly, like water plunging over a sudden drop, too loudly for her to make out the voices that speak so slowly, drawing out every syllable that comes as if spoken through thick glass. Unable to close her eyes or turn away, she sees everything happen. His words – final words – leave his lips, but she doesn’t hear them. She sees it: his lips curling around that final noise.

The dirt sprays around his face and she remembers the first time she saw him smile, those lips she’d only ever heard spew vulgarities before curled into such a kind smile, prompting the small depression in his cheek to form, that one dimple that ended his lopsided grin of his. She’d just finished telling him she’d rather shove the boots he was always shining up his ass than go back and scrub every tile of the communal showers walls on her hands and knees with the stiff bristled brush and frothing water he’d just attempted to hand her. She’d hated his amusement at the time, but now she finds herself desperate to return to the days of his condescension as she watches the dirt rise around his face no longer smiling.

His frown deepens, the skin between his eyebrows furrowing and, if this wasn’t real, his expression would be amusing. He’s so obviously irritated by what’s going on, completely devoid of fear, filled only with the kind of agitation he faces messy cadets with. It’s almost imperceptible, the downright terror that flashes briefly in his eyes as he looks at her, really sees her, and thinks this might be the last time. That terrifies him in the briefest second of his life because he sees his thoughts reflected in her eyes usually so calm, fearless. There’s a storm brewing in her eyes and he sees her reach out for him, pull him into an uncomfortable embrace that makes him aware of what must be an agonizing ripple of pain emanating from his side dulled by a rush of adrenaline.

Levi wants to push Mikasa away because he knows this is too much for her. She needs to be running into combat, not dragging him to safety. But all he can do is mumble stupidly into her jacket and cling to her because, despite everything he stands for and the clarity of his thoughts, the human part of him wants to sink into her embrace and die there because he knows death is inevitable, waiting without patience on his next shaking breath.


End file.
